


kindling

by cultfilmx



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Absinthe, Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Eventual Smut, F/M, Heist, Masturbation, Sexual Assault, Slow Burn, mcr references
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-23
Updated: 2017-01-23
Packaged: 2018-09-19 09:35:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 8
Words: 19,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9433043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cultfilmx/pseuds/cultfilmx
Summary: “He tells me it’s a blessing: two good looking kids on the run, time bomb ticking in our trunk. I don’t think he knows what blessings are.”A dystopian story about laser guns, heists, a radio station, and a notebook with a cat in a flower pot on the cover.





	1. Chapter 1

Dear R

Dear Emi

Dear Diary

Don’t name your diary. It’s stupid and takes away from the fact that this is about you, not some imaginary friend who spends their time judging your day.

Just don’t name it.

You aren’t talking to anyone but yourself. No imaginary human cares for you and your daily activities. Stop lying to yourself. 

That being said, I’m still going to write something. I think I kind of have to write it down at this point. At least I’m going to tell myself I have to. I have too many things I can’t say out loud--There’s no way in hell he’d hear it, either. Even if I did say it, it’d go in one ear and out the other with him. He’s so set on this shit that he wouldn’t even notice if he was driving himself headfirst into a sandstorm.

I have to write it down because I’m pretty sure that’s the first step in “officially committing” to my death. I said yes, after all. I didn’t promise, but it’s an unspoken one of sorts. And quite honestly, there aren’t any other options anymore. Maybe in a different timeline there are other options.

So, I’m not like, writing to myself per say, but maybe to some future generation who might find this after I’m long gone, which in my opinion is better than an imaginary friend. This seems a lot sounder in my opinion, that is, you know, if there are future generations.

Maybe this will make a bedtime story. Or maybe it’ll make some good firewood.

Fuck it. Use this thing as firewood for all I care.

I imagine most artifacts don’t necessarily have a clean start, so here I go.

Okay. So. Uh. I found this thing when we stopped two gas station ages ago and it caught my eye because it looked so stupid, you know? I mean, this notebook has a fucking cat in a flower pot on the cover, and behind the cat is this weird baby blue design as if this cat just landed in a pot in the middle of nowhere. The combination of heat and the sugar high from the slurpee I was sipping at brought me to the conclusion that maybe I should be proactive with what little time I have left. Instead of sitting in a car staring at nothing, I could write, or draw or whatever. So, I stole it. I stole a cat in a flower pot notebook.

Ah, but the journaling doesn’t start there, because by the time we’re in the car I realize we don’t have a single fucking pen or pencil in the goddamn vehicle. Feels like a waste of effort, and I can’t help but feel irritated by the fact that I didn’t steal a pen as well. I do my best at I hiding the notebook under my seat but I feel like it’s burning a hole beneath me--I’m so aware of its ridiculousness, and how much he would disapprove of this kind of thing.

I mean, there I was, thinking that since I’ve established that my death is soon (or around the not-so-distant bend), I might as well try to do some self-induced therapy. You know, ask myself why I’m getting caught in this mess. Alas, I had to wait three days until we pulled up to a diner before I could write my first entry: this one. I try my best to swipe it into my bag without my partner noticing, and bring it in with me.

Anyways, as per usual when arriving in a diner, we take a quick trip to the bathroom to freshen up before we order. We usually clean our armpits, wash our faces or what have you. Essentially, make sure we don’t stink like shit and get kicked out as soon as we sit down.

So far, I’ve been sitting here by myself for quite some time while my partner in crime is locked up in the bathroom for nearly twenty minutes, which gives me plenty of time to scribble out some nonsense.

For the sake of anonymity we’ll call him Howard.

Actually, since I’m dying and so is he, I’m just going to write his real name—Harry. It’s fucking Harry. We’ll both be dead by the time anyone finds this, especially if all goes as planned.

Right. SO. He’s in the bathroom right now probably grooming his silky tendrils or some shit while I sit around torturing the waitress by abusing the term “bottomless coffee”. If I ask for another cup she’ll probably switch my cream for cyanide.

I guess I’m supposed to spill my guts out, right? Because it’s only therapeutic if I do that, yeah?

In an attempt to spare the dramatic, let’s get things over with and just say it: I’m a criminal.

Honestly, even writing the word down seems wrong, like it doesn’t apply to me. I mean, my existence as a criminal is intentional, but my enjoyment of the title is lacking. Criminal provokes a lot of shitty connotation—some asshole, some troubled youths, or what have you. Three weeks ago I would have laughed if someone called me that.

The word criminal feels wrong because I’m pretty sure what Harry and I do is good. We’re doing good. It’s just the kind of good no one will know about or really believe in. In fact, it’s the kind of good that won’t get into a history textbook because it’s downright questionable.

It’s weird how we’ve been doing this long enough that you’d think I’d be able to write it down clearly, but it kind of comes out all jumbled and sh—  
\---  
“—What is that?” He slides into the seat across from me, his jeans squeaking against the material.

“Stupid girl stuff,” Is all I manage. Throwing my gender under the bus is a sure fire way to hide my cat-in-a-flower-pot notebook. Quirking an eyebrow at me, he picks up the cold coffee that I ordered for him nearly half an hour ago. He doesn’t believe me and I don’t care.

“It terrifies me that you make a living by lying and that was the best you could do,” He begrudgingly takes a sip from his mug, swallowing icy sludge.

“I think calling it “making a living” is borderline offensive to the lack of food in my stomach, and coin in my pocket,” I slide the notebook carefully under the table and into my messenger bag.

The sooner this interrogation ends, the happier I’ll be. It’s at this point that I realize he’s examining his own reflection on his coffee cup and it makes me contemplate dragging my arm across the table and knocking all our cutlery and cups onto the checkered floor.

But I’m not that cruel. To waitresses.

Three weeks straight in someone’s company can make a person go mad, especially under our conditions.

“Are you going to do it or am I?” He says with a nod to our server. He pops some gum into his mouth and starts chewing at it again like he’s a cow.

“She’s married,” I mention offhandedly, taking sight of her ring—it’s cheap, run-of-the-mill, and a standard at any pawn shop. Not worth the effort of weaseling it. It looks even cheaper in contrast with her ketchup red claws.

To think that before all this I’d never even been to a diner, let alone see a single sole wear “nail polish”. Where the two of us are from, there’s no use for that shit. That’s some City shit. But even out here, in scattered desert towns, these guys try to pretend they’re better than us just because they can see the lights in the distance at night. Where we’re from there’s too much fog to see outside your house. Three weeks ago was the first time I’ve ever seen a star.

“Ah yes, infidelity, the worst of crimes that we’ve performed,” He mumbles, tapping his hands against the tabletop. I watch his fingers smudge across the red surface. His nails are clean and look recently trimmed—I guess that’s what he was doing in the bathroom.

“Okay, up to you,” He looks me over, his facial expression coming close to looking something like disappointment. With an extravagant run of his hands through his hair, he gently swings himself out off of his seat. Standing at just beneath six feet, he saunters over to the waitress. She seems to welcome his company.

“Her? Nah, she’s just my sister, Mam.”


	2. Chapter 2

And now we sit. And we wait. We being me and this notebook with the cat-in-the-flower pot. I should name the cat. Not the diary, just the cat. For my own sake more than a future generation’s sake.

He’s taking longer than usual, which is ridiculous because it’s not even like the food was that good or expensive. If it’s expensive, he goes down on them too. Or so he tells me. He thinks he’s funny, wiping his still wet fingers on the side of the driver seat. He thinks he’s funny when he readjusts his cock in his pants, darting his eyes at me, looking for a reaction.

Whatever.

Bathroom stall fucking, cleaning closet fucking, fucking out back—he’s done it all. He’s done it all while I sit in this shitty cramped car, smoking cigarettes like I’ll never use my lungs again. Depending on whether or not we go through with tonight’s raid, I may never use these lungs again, anyhow.

I think he finds humor in the fact that while he’s getting his thrill on, I stick to the sweltering leather seats of our jeep. I can’t even complain, I mean after all, I’m fed. He feeds me—whatever’s on route, whatever’s on the menu--But it feels like I’m getting leftovers sometimes.

I tried it once, fucking for a meal, under the advice and insistence of Harry. I didn’t know what I was doing, I just got her pubic hair in my teeth, and her nails printed in my thighs for days. When we were done, I felt the shame of dissipating innocence stinging at my cheeks like a slap. When I walked back to the car he was leaning against the passenger seat, reading some local newspaper’s garbage article, sunglasses on, hair pulled back. He looked like he had been waiting for hours, when in actuality it had barely been one. I tried to stand up tall, look like I just took one for the tea, but I hadn’t wanted it, and I was hungry again by the time it was done.

He didn’t ask one goddamn question about it, even though it had been his suggestion in the first place. He told me it was my turn to be the breadwinner, but when we got into the car he just turned up Sunshine Radio until we were so far gone into the Desert Zone that we didn’t get any feed. At first I read this as disappointment or even anger, but he never made me do it again.

He tells me it’s a blessing: two good looking kids on the run, time bomb ticking in our trunk.  
I don’t think he knows what blessings are.

\--

He raps three times at my window, shaking me from my journaling. Three taps is a signal to start the car up quick. The sound electrocutes my body into starting up. I fumble around for the keys, knocking over old takeout boxes and dirty clothes in search of them. It takes me a few seconds too long for Harry’s liking, but I find them, thankfully, in the drink holder beside me.

“Come on, Di.”

He says my name, so it’s gotta be serious. He swings open the door with a bit too much finesse, and the car sings out under the power of his pull. Throwing himself into the front, he snatches the keys out of my grip, diving them into the ignition and pressing on the gas with the toe of his pointy toed shoes. Even with his sunglasses on I can tell he’s thinking hard, brain gears turning under the pressure of something. He’s chewing his gum like he hasn’t tasted it in weeks. You never quite get used to the smacking and squelching.

I try to relax into the seat, but I’m too worked up from the way he’s ignoring stop signs and trading lanes like baseball cards. I don’t ask. No use, after all. He’ll tell me when he’s ready.

“Smells like shit in here. How many did you smoke? I told you to roll down the windows if you smoke more than two,” He grumbles, taking a sharp turn, followed by a glance over his shoulder. I want to tell him he took too long, but I know he’s not in the mood. He just wants to take the piss out of me.

Per usual.

I reach my hand towards the knob of the radio, but he smacks it aside. It doesn’t hurt, but I yelp in surprise against my own volition. I turn my attention to the beige carpet of the desert, spread neatly across Hell’s living room. The dirt is starting to kick up into what looks like a storm in the distance. Tonight’s going to be a hotel night. I can tell.

“Pigs,” Is all he says, and I know he doesn’t mean the cops. Cops are nothing. Pigs are the real thing to fear. “She was one of them.”

“Mm,” I grunt, afraid to say the wrong thing.

“Tried to reach for her knife,” He grunts, swiping some of his hair to the side.

He turns on Sunshine Radio. DJ Death Defy coming in to tell us the good word.

\--

I can tell by the way he’s humming that he doesn’t want to be here. He’s making up some tune to a song I’m pretty sure doesn’t exist. I can tell he’s pissed that some sandstorm is ruining our chances to make some serious dough. He’s pissed to not be on the road, hitting up a bigger hotel further along, and instead, stuck in this cheap, nearly empty one. He hums his way into the bathroom, unzipping his pants before he’s even gotten inside.

Dear Juniper???

Can’t even remember the last time we stayed in a hotel, but this certainly isn’t the worst of them. We’ve had smaller beds, drippier taps, louder neighbours, sandier nights. We’ve seen hotels, and then we’ve seen hotels.

The beds actually start to feel nice after you’ve slept in a car for nearly a month. In a car, you’re either crunched up in the backseat or half upright in front with your feet on the dash. You never quite win.

In hotels, it doesn’t smell like dirt, sweat and leather, but like people, and bleach. Even if hotels all kind of smell stale and identical, I was okay with it, at least it was consistent. My only gripe with hotels is that it makes people like us on edge when we don’t move for too long. Then again, lately, everything puts us on edge.

I don’t have much else to write about tonight. Harry hasn’t talked much about what happened at the restaurant, and by now he’s usually ranting and rambling about any little thing that ticks him off. I’m not worried, but I’m not okay with letting it go either. He didn’t even try to pick up the girl at the front desk when we checked in. Maybe he’s as exhausted as I am.

I pull off my shoes one by one, revealing my blistered and dirtied feet to the hotel room. An indescribable odor hits me, leaving my nose crinkled and lips curled. I smell like absolute shit.

We’d usually grab as many socks as we could whenever a gas station sold them, and situations such as these didn’t happen too often. Looking back on it, we’d been out of clean socks for a while now, no wonder I reek.  
I look at the state of my bare feet and the wispy hair that peeks out from under the rolled up ankles of my scuffed-up jeans. Even when we were working in the factories back home, we still had chances to go home, wash-up, trim or take care of any hair we no longer wanted. Life out here meant not time for that. You stop checking yourself out in reflections, afraid of what you might look like now.

When you’ve been unclean for this long, you start to feel pretty when you grow hair, like that’s your body trying to protect you and hide you from dangers of the desert—the heat, the rubble, the sun, maybe even Pigs themselves.

I peel my pants off as fast as my exhausted body will allow, until I’m left in nothing but my underwear. I try my best not to think about the greyish hue it has now adapted.

I hear a sound soft enough that it barely even catches my attention. I have to hold my breath to really hear it, that’s how faint of a noise it is. At first, I think he’s singing, like he does on the good days, or on the days when DJ Death Defy says goodbye to another round of Pigs and blasts old-timey sounds. For a moment after that I think he’s crying, but he ain’t.

I realize a little too slowly for my liking that he’s cumming. It shouldn’t have surprised me, he’s done it in hotel showers before, but the unmistakable feeling of hot embarrassment creeps across my face.

When you travel the road with another person, you kind of see it all. You pull over to take a piss with no shrubbery in sight, you smell each other’s shit and B.O when the hotel is the size of a closet, you share grubby socks, you sometimes share toothbrushes (if you brush at all), and you certainly hear each other cum.

I mean, I’d like to think I’m quite accommodating about it, because I usually do it when he’s asleep. I can’t cum in the shower anyway. I need to be flush against the bed, face buried in my pillow, hand massaging myself as I grind against the sheets. I’m not loud, but I’m certainly not sleeping. I always wait ‘til I hear the sound of his snores before I begin. I like to think I’m more respectful with my needs than he is.

In my defense, I rarely get to do it. After all, while he’s out “earning” our meals, I have no one taking care of myself. If he is awake while I’m doing it, he doesn’t say anything and I much prefer it that way.

The worst is mornings though, when we’re in a rush, and it takes him a few minutes to settle down. Sometimes he’ll run the water like he’s brushing his teeth. But his flushed face and dopey eyes after he leaves the bathroom says it all.

I dunno. You get used to it.

You get used to the stale scent of their morning breath, or to quickly reaching forward and wiping sleep from their eye, or to the way their hair gets caught in your mouth when you’ve been rolling around too much beside each other.

We don’t cuddle or anything, but we don’t feel uncomfortable brushing.

I hadn’t even noticed he was done showering. He steps out of the bathroom, long hair wet and dripping onto the carpeted floor, he tosses me a towel, “No more hot water.”

“Gee,” I pull my tank top over my head, revealing my nearly demolished sports bra. “Thanks.”


	3. Chapter 3

That incessant, awful itch of not being able to sleep might be the death of me. Especially when you’re exhausted, it is one of the worst punishments imaginable to man.

I regret the bottomless coffee. Wholeheartedly.

It feels like someone’s trying to open an umbrella in my ribcage, and my lungs can’t seem to capture enough air in them. I even try imagining shapes on the ceiling in hopes of relaxing my relentless inner dialogue.

Harry is practically in a coma, he hasn’t stirred for hours. He’s lying on his stomach, his head turned my way, breathing warm air onto my left shoulder. His hair fans out onto the bed, tangling into the sheets, like the way ivy used to grow in our settlement, long before the City came.

Out of boredom, I’ve started on a new game of sorts—seeing how many of his hairs I can pluck out of his head before it wakes him. After four he lets out a heavy sigh and an indistinguishable mumble.

When we first started travelling I used to try to make sense of what he was saying, maybe hoping I’d find something good out of it. 

I don’t do anything the same anymore. I stare at kernelled ceilings or the inner roof of the car just letting my tired, dizzy head stray. I used to stare at the pictures tacked onto my walls.

I don’t have walls to own anymore.

He makes some odd spluttering noise, which garners a bit of humor to my lifeless night. He wakes with a start and I suck in my breath, suddenly aware that we are both awake at the same time. An unnecessary amount of goosebumps surface across my skin. I mean, for the most part, we are awake at the same time a lot, but for some reason everything feels huge and nerve-wracking at this hour, in this location, so close to one another in bed.

I shut my eyes and pretend I’m asleep. He clears his throat quietly, and lazily pulls his hair out of his face before turning over and falling back asleep with his back to me. I count the birthmarks on his back.

\--

The next morning I wake to the stale smell of sweat and bleach. The sun bleeds through the cheap curtains, dancing and spinning on the floor like a roulette wheel.

I roll over, now with half of my face off of the bed, observing yesterday’s damage: my disgusting socks.

I can’t help but see the resemblance of that the shade of the carpet has to blood.

I blink, trying to push off the residual grogginess of a shitty night’s rest. I scan over the room with tired eyes, which appears to be just as bleak as it was in the night time.

My body feels unimaginably sore, like I’ve been dropped from a great height. Harry has told me before that I tense in my sleep. That would make a lot of sense considering how my muscles often felt like they have taken a beating each morning. You’d think I’d gone out fighting while I’m asleep.

But there isn’t time for complaints today. We have a long morning ahead of us.

Harry, his mousy brown hair tied at a knot at the base of his neck, seems to be occupied by the setup of the crappy hotel coffee machine. Seems he also didn’t sleep so well, he’s almost never awake before me, and he’s almost never one for coffee unless it’s an emergency.

I untangle my body from the blankets before dragging myself over to his corner of the room. His shoulders slump in embarrassment as I lean over him, observing the cheap machine.

I can’t help but recognise how sticky my skin feels against my shirt, usually I could just ignore the feeling and get used to it, but today I was hyper aware of everything.

I can tell, just by the way the sky looks from behind the curtains that it’s going to swelter like none other today. Sweating bullets has a new meaning.

“Needs more water,” I motion to the well-worn device. He doesn’t say anything, but he grabs the pot to go fill up another cup. I take his seat, my thighs, nearly two times thicker than Harry’s, immediately begin sticking to the cheap plastic. Our twin revolvers sit in front of me, open like a patient ready for surgery.

Still in my half-awake state, my fingers dance towards them—it’s not like I hadn’t used one before, it just felt like it never got easier, no matter how many times I used it. Holding it still felt like hot coal, and shooting it still felt like playing God.

I consider grabbing my notebook just to write that one-liner down—I’ll have to remember it for later.

His hair tickles my shoulder, alerting me to his presence beside me. I hadn’t even noticed him until now. He pours the water into the machine slowly, before starting it up. Clicks and whirs orchestrate the room and I try to relax, knowing that coffee will soon be in my hands, no matter how bitter it might taste.

“We should get going,” He says it like I don’t already know. He says it like it hasn’t been on my mind all last night and morning.

Harry barely touches his coffee, and I realize that maybe he was trying to do me a favour by making it. He knows these days are the worst ones for me. He knows the minute we leave this room I won’t be myself for a few hours, sometimes even days.

When I’m done my own I move on to I drink his coffee, even though I can barely stomach the idea of drinking or eating anything right now. I need to wake up.

I could try to write it down, the pre-thrill, but it’s hard to voice.

Everyday closer to the City feels like I’m walking closer and closer into the sun.

He packs his things in silence while I scribble into this notebook. I have my mask, bag and gun neatly placed on the edge of the bed (which Harry has taken the time to neatly make, as he “feels bad for the people who work in this shithole”) —ready to go at any point. I make sure to take all of the mini-shampoos and soaps in case we need them, and now it was just up to Harry to finish up whatever he needs to do and lastly: call the shots. Literally.

My anxiety is hitting that all-time high, the one that I forget how bad it is until I’m in it. You’d think the room was on fire, just by the temperature of it, and the way my head was starting to spin. My thighs start sticking real tight to my jeans and my hands feel slippery.

God, I need a smoke. Haven’t had one since yesterday afternoon and I’d kill a man for a new pack ri---

A faux-leather mask hits the side of my face with enough force to make a small ‘thwap’ noise. I drop my pen, forgiving myself for giving up mid-sentence. I had been rambling about smoke and cigarettes for far too many paragraphs, anyhow. I take hold of the lightly used mask with a sigh. Its smells like my sweat and my brand of smoke and I happily greet its return.

When I glance up, Harry’s waiting at the door, visibly impatient. He’s leaning against the wall with his arms crossed and hip cocked, like he’s disappointed in me for not having read his mind and known he was ready sooner. His ski-mask is loosely placed at the top of his head. Its neon yellow, which he’s never quite explained why, but there are a lot of things he won’t answer even if you do ask. Harry talks when he wants to talk, and there was nothing you could do about it.

I pull my hair back with my hand and slide the tight half-mask over my head, letting the scent flood my nose. I fiddle with it until it’s as comfortable as I can get it to be, the faux leather suffocating my already sweaty face. Not like I was breathing properly anyway, I was practically wheezing from cigarette withdrawal and fear.

Throwing my notebook into my sack, I pick up my gun delicately, like it might break under too firm of a grip.

Harry, whose mask is now pulled over his face, gestures at the door with his gun.

How is it possible that one can tread through oil and free fall at the exact same time? The gun in my hand is the anvil keeping me locked to the floor.

The length of the hallway before we reach the lobby seems endless, exhausting me more and more with every single step. The base of our boots scuffing along the blood red carpet in some unceremonious harmony. I can smell cigarettes and it makes me nauseous I want one so bad. My knees struggle to lift with every step, my eyesight is so heightened I feel as if I can see every miniscule detail of the place.

“Hands up!”

He steps in front of me, making a show of the dangerous toy in his hands. His voice is mutilated by the thick mask over his lips. I can see his hair peek through the bottom at the base of his neck, looking like curling flames under the lobby’s lights.

There are four people here: a receptionist, a young couple, and a business shithead.

He fires one into the ceiling, this one is to show he’s for real. I can feel and see the specks of debris, they spray across the tops of Harry and I’s heads and shoulders. The receptionist jumps in surprise, and the room breaks into a chorus of noise. It’s a quartet for the desperate—the receptionist is pleading, the couple are providing the sobbing harmonies, and the business man is playing the smallest violin in the goddamn world.

I shoot him dead. Point blank. Upper right forehead.

The song comes to a halt. The couple is paralyzed, the receptionist is holding their breath. The rush of silence after the gunshot causes my ears to warm.

I’m close enough range that it breaks his skull with no complaint, his aftermath adding another layer of red to the carpet. I feel his remnants decorate my mask and I feel the ricochet of my gun realigning my everything, in the way only cold blooded murder can. Fuck these disgusting people.

He’s slumped against the wall, like a tipped over coat rack. His expensive hat fallen beside his feet.

The first one to break the silence I’ve created is Harry, “Any cash you got, hand it over!” His voice is barely recognizable amongst the layer of material and the unrecognizable urgency in his tone, saved only for moments like these.

I dig my hands into the man’s pockets, fingers scrambling for any semblance of a wallet. Now that we’ve fired two bullets we likely have a few more short minutes to get out of here. Just when I’m starting to think we should just leave it, my hand catches hold of something leather and square—perfect.

I remove myself from him, spitting aimlessly on him, it lands on his chin, and starts to trickle onto his neck and under his collar.

“Money, now!” Harry, who has moved on from the couple is now scraping the register clean. We don’t like taking from small businesses, but sometimes survival comes first (“consider it a donation for the better good”, he says one night after he gets just a bit greedy and grabs a bottle of absinthe from the motel’s bar).

When the last bit of cash meets his hand, we book it.

He recklessly shoves the fistfuls of cash into his duffel bag. As if by clockwork he grabs my hand, the one without the gun, and pulls me along with him. His hand feels like cool air, feels like my sister, feels like a good night’s sleep, feels like a second of clarity in all of this.

His legs are so long, and he smokes so much less than me, that if he weren’t holding onto my hand, the gun would have kept me there—tied to the floor.  
\---

“Fuck.” I’m so angry the words just come right out.

He knows I’m on edge, but he recognizes the disparity in my voice is something more intense than normal. He breaks his eyes from the endless sand and steals a look at what I’m up to.

“What is that?” He asks, his jaw tight with residual adrenalin from our morning’s adventure. There’s a kind of concern in his voice that I haven’t heard since we left home.

“I dunno. Not a wallet,” I nearly punch a hole through the jeep’s passenger seat window. “How the fuck did I fuck this up?”  
“Well, what is it?” He says, throwing a little more pressure into the gas. We’d been out for almost an hour now and there was no sign of any chase, not with the heat so torturous. The two of us were practically painted in a triple coat of sweat, blood and sand.

We had gotten a fair amount from the young bourgeois type lovebirds and the hotel’s pockets—but I had mistaken this guy’s pouch for some kind of wallet. We could’ve been set for the rest of the trip, no more robberies with the amount that guy was probably holding. I mean, the guy was all out on his own, what an oppurtunity. An oppurtunity I had fucked up.

“Dunno. Bunch of needles. Probably for some kind of Town thing?” I grumble, absolutely furious with myself.

“Maybe. Or he’s a big shot user,” His humour is always particularly more bitter when he needs to pee, and he has made me aware that he’s been needing to pee from nearly the moment we left the hotel. I don’t have time for this.

I try to be understanding, after all, If you’ve ever been dehydrated and in need of taking a piss at the same time, you have come close to the highest form of torture.

“Yeah. Maybe,” I unzip one of the inner pockets of the pouch, delicately checking the compartments. Inside, strapped carefully, with the kind of precision only one of their big city machines could make, is a vial, the size of my pinky nail. It’s filled with an iridescent liquid in a shade I’ve only seen come from oil spills. It shifts in shade between a phenomenal pink, to an exhilarating blue, to an ethereal purple. Whatever this shit was, it didn’t feel good to be holding it, and I didn’t want to look at it for much longer again.

I was still too hungover from the usage of all my energy an hour earlier. I decide to leave the thinking for later, and tuck it into the glove compartment.

I try to distract myself by fiddling with the dials, hoping to reach The Station. Nothing more comforting than the voice of DJ Death Defy. Nothing more comforting. Here was a man, probably not much older than Harry and I, who had actually escaped the Town after being held captive. He used to be just a strange, warbly radio show back home, but out here, on the run, he is the only thing guiding us sometimes. When he’s not playing old tunes, he’s telling stories of a world before ours, or he’s updating us on the other teams of rebels out there--people like ourselves, who want greater good.

Not a lot of truths about DJ out here, just rumours. Some say he’s got arms made of high-tech Town technology, others say he’s a trap to lure in rebels like us. I don’t know the truth, but I know I want to find out before I go.

I realize I’m overthinking again and try to keep my mind from the thought of death again.

“Why do you think he was there?” I speak up

Harry sighs, shaking his head, “That Town man? I dunno. Maybe he was looking to build over that shithole and make a casino.” I watch as another bead of sweat drips down the side of his face. We probably stink, but I don’t even notice.

“Maybe,” I shrug, as lost as he is. “But he was all by himself, no other men, no nothing.”

“They could’ve been in their rooms?” He suggests, and it sounds oddly like he’s trying to comfort both me and himself. It’s so easy to get rattled out here.

“Yeah, I guess.” I lick at my thumb, and swipe away a small splash of blood that sits on the side of his chin. He says nothing, but his eyes soften.

I turn my gaze to his hands, which are calloused and washed with an off-grey layer of dirt. I look at my own, which are in a similar state. Even back home, when we were working all the time, no one’s hands looked like this. These were criminal hands.

I try to let out a long breath, relaxing into the steaming leather of the seat. I pull out my notebook, forgiving myself for openly doing this in front of Harry, despite saying otherwise earlier.

“What’re you doing?” He grunts, examining my notebook with quiet judgement from the corner of his eye.

“Drawing.”

“I’m driving for miles and about to piss my pants, and you’re drawing?” He snaps. But I can tell by the way he says it that he doesn’t mean anything by it.

I don’t say nothing, just try to concentrate on the veins and curves of him.

He huffs, rolling his eyes in frustration, one of which I couldn’t quite understand. He twists his head over to sneak a brief peak. “What is that?”, The curiosity leaks through.

“Your hands.” I say simply, trying to keep my hand steady as the car jumps and bumps across the unforgiving land.

“Why my hands?”

I shrug.


	4. Chapter 4

When you’re tired and dehydrated enough, the sand in front of you starts to take shapes—starts looking like golden hair, or fur. Like maybe you’re just a flea on the back of some wild dog, combing your way to the centre of something. Is there a point in living as a flea--your only purpose is just feeding off of others, digging a house in someone’s skin or whatever.

It’s starting to feel a lot like we’re a disturbance in someone else’s life. Like we’re the fleas on the back of the City.

When it hits midday I’m pretty sure I can smell it. The chances that I’m imagining it are more than likely, in fact, it’s nearly impossible that I could smell this thing. We’ve got it packaged up so airtight, you shouldn’t be able to smell it at all, but I think my mind is getting to me under the glare of the sun.

We’ve hit the point now where were pressing our lips to crushed up cans of energy drinks and old juice bottles in an attempt to get some kind of hydration. It comes to us as an almost fearful relief when we spot a small village the size of maybe 20 diners smashed together. For a second I think it’s not even real, but all at once, if you hadn’t eaten or drank in a few days, why would you hallucinate this shitty good-for-nothing place? So I guess it’s gotta be real.

I nearly crawl out of the car, barely even pulling on my boots properly. My heels are falling out the back of them, and Harry has to actually sit me down and help me put them on properly before he drags me out again to help him refill the gas.

The gas station, which sits at the very right corner piece of this little shitstop, seems to be held up by wood. This whole place looked like it’s made of it. No one uses wood anymore, too hard to find, and not as useful as metal. This place has gotta be old, and by the looks of it, pretty empty. I imagine it gets too hard to live in areas like this, in fuck nowhere. How’re you supposed to make any money? Keep a family alive?

I find myself, with what little strength I have, locking the creaky gas pump into our vehicle. Harry heads into the station to pay up, piss, and buy us refreshments with what newly acquired money we have.

I can barely hold myself up straight, I’m keeping myself together by leaning my head against the backdoor of our jeep, not caring about the amount of grease, shit, and sand that might be finding its way onto my face and hair. How was it that less than a few hours ago I was squeaky clean from a shower, and now I’m a literal pig in shit?

The sound of the gas chugging into our tank is enough to lull me into a strange half-dream. I can’t help but shut my eyes, wishing the car would just swallow me whole so I could lay down. I’m so fucking nauseous feel like my body’s been living off of my own stomach acid.

“You alright there, hey?” The sound of someone’s voice other than Harry’s is enough to make me open my eyes. I’m quite certain that this wasn’t a dream, someone addressed me. Resisting the urge to shut them again, I look around for the source of the sound.

“You just look a little off, you okay there?” I can tell immediately that he’s not like us. Everything about him drips of ease. His face doesn’t clench when he grins. His shoulders aren’t squared and stiff.

The man in front of me is wearing a pair of overalls, rolled up to his shins, just like the ones my brother might have owned before The City took over our range. The more I look at him the more dream-like he seems to be; His hair glints like spun gold, the kind of colour you’d never see where I’m from, you only see it out here in the middle of the desert-- must be something ‘bout the sun that gets it like that. His face is painted with specks and his eyes are squinting at the brightness, so I can’t tell what colour they are.

I’m so exhausted his face isn’t even quite making any sense in my mind, it’s all jumbled and pudge and sweet with a smile. He looks worried. For me? Yeah, for me. He’s asking me if I’m alright. Can’t remember the last time some stranger was worried about me.

“Hello?” He asks. For so long Harry’s been at the forefront, everyone else paling and blurring. It’s unusual to look at someone who’s not him for longer than a minute.

“She’s fine. Back up, buddy.” Harry snaps from over my shoulder, scaring me. I hadn’t even heard him approaching I’m so exhausted.

I feel an intense stinging sensation at the base of my neck. It throws my body into a state of panic, and I let go of the gas pump, nearly losing balance as I whip myself around. Harry’s holding a piece of ice between his fingers, which after giving me a small smile, he pops into his mouth.  
He ignores the man in overalls, playfully eyeing me while throwing the ice block back and forth inside of his mouth. Seems that pissing put him in a better mood.

He then folds my hands around a bottle of water and a pack of cigarettes and I gasp in excitement.

“Come on, once you’re done with that we can drop by this little joint down the block and get something to eat and maybe stay there for the afternoon,” He says, now pressing an ice cube onto the back of his own neck.

I look down, and realize a quarter of my water is already gone and I can’t even remember drinking it. I pull away the bottle long enough from my cracked lips to ask, “Wait, afternoon?”

“We don’t got enough time to waste another night.” He says evenly, removing the packaging to some mystery gas station creation—usually a local delicacy, like bird stew patties or whatever.

I’m so fucking tired I can’t even begin to complain. I’m so exhausted from the heat and starvation that I’m unable to express to him how there is no fucking way my body will be able to spend another night cramped in the car. I mean, maybe, were it a few weeks ago, when we weren’t driving into the storm’s eye of this heatwave—but there was no fucking way I could handle another two days of scorching heat.

“Listen, I don’t mean to bother…” I’d almost forgotten about the boy in the overalls. He struts his way over to our conversation, disengaging my gas pump and placing the handle back in its holder, “But we rarely get guests ‘round here, and I sure know it’d make Mrs. Swanson’s month if you stayed long enough for dinner and breakfast.”

The idea of a home cooked breakfast makes my eyes water. I open my mouth to speak, but decide against it when I catch sight of the expression on Harry’s face. He doesn’t budge. He’s not interested in making an investments, or performing any niceties. He’s late for his own death date, and no nice meal or good night’s rest can hold him back.

Before we can even get a word out, I feel a stranger’s hand lightly sit against my lower back. His hands are almost calming against the grime and sweat that has collected there. “Come on, whaddya say? Make one little trip out of it. Could do you and your girlfriend good.”

Neither of us choose to correct him, mostly because the less he knows about us, the better. I send a pleading glance towards Harry, and it takes everything in me not to drop to my knees and beg. I’d kill for one more chance at a night in a soft bed, with a real, home cooked, warm meal. My whole body starts to ache with joy simply by thinking about it.

The blonde boy swings his eyes back and forth between us like a pendulum, “Listen, I dunno if this seals the deal, but she’s got a nice collection of hooch.”

“Hooch?” Harry repeats, mockingly, not lifting his eyes from the arm draped around my waist. Even though neither of us were from Town, we both came from a factory sector, meaning we saw no value in towns still made of wood and clay. Words like “hooch” and “coin” were for slum places like these. Where Harry and I come from, the people who used these words we’re just as weak as their structures.

“You know! Hooch! Booze!” The boy giggles, and it doesn’t strike me as genuine one bit, but a look crosses my partner-in-crime’s face that says it all. Folks like Overalls here probably didn’t get customers too often, I’m sure they can smell our money from a miles away and will lick our Jeep clean ‘til they get all of it.

I can tell Harry is sizing the poor guy up, trying to figure out why he’s begging and pleading us so damn hard to stay.

“Yeah. Hell. Sure. Why not?” Harry’s face splits into a grin that gets my skin feeling ice cold in the middle of this dry heat. He’s up to something, and all I want is to take a long nap.

\--

I swallow something that smells like fuel and tastes like the insides of pipes.

“So?” He asks, his lips permanently stuck in that twisted little grin. His name is Niall, and according to Harry, I need to keep him busy, whatever that means. “It as bad as you thought?”

I shake my head ‘no’.

He watches me carefully as I pull a variety of uncomfortable faces. My throat feels like it’s being shredded by tiny knives.

Just as we had predicted, Niall had come, no longer dressed in overalls but in a simple button up and jeans, you could tell by how he was wearing it that it was the nicest thing he owned. What’s the occasion? He came knocking half-an-hour ago asking me and Harry if we wanted to join him for some “hooch”. Harry dismisses him, just as we had planned. Niall showing up allowed us to roleplay a small “domestic”, visibly squabbling in front of him. Our “fight” ended with Harry giving me the cold shoulder and murmuring a bitter “have fun”. Whether he believed it or not, the small smile sitting on Niall’s face when I was “allowed to go out”, was unmistakably there.

The tavern is practically empty save for myself, Niall, two older men in the corner, and Mrs.Swanson, who’s been drifting in and out of the room every few. I imagine she’s the heartbeat of this place.

The walls are the shade of Harry’s hair, if it was smoothed into perfection. The whole place smells like something I can’t put my finger on, like a warmth from somewhere far from here. Places like these, you wonder what they used to be like before the world went haywire. How many people used to live here?

“You never had hooch before?” He asks, flicking his bangs back with his hands. His eyes haven’t left me since he saw me and it’s starting to make me feel a bit ill. Not even Harry stares at me this long, and he’s beside me every day.

“No, uh…” I trail off, trying to focus my brain enough to craft a “distracting backstory”, “Well, yes, I used to. But my boyfriend says I get real flirty when I’m drunk, so I’m not allowed to anymore.”

“Oh?” I can’t tell if he believes me, but he drops the smile to nod somewhat solemnly, “Well, he doesn’t sound like a very fun boyfriend, now does he?”

“No,” I breathe, looking up at him from behind heavy lids. “He sure doesn’t.” I feel like a downright dolt. At least when Harry and I put on our little couple facade it usually doesn’t last much longer than a dinner or a conversation in a hotel lobby. This was without a doubt the worst roleplay session I’d had to date.

He draws his thumb lightly over my hand, as if to gesture some kind of illusion of comfort.

“How’d you two end out so far out of the way?”

We had gotten this question plenty of times on our trip from waiters and store owners.“My family wanted to meet him. They said it isn’t fair for me to date anyone without their approval!” I giggle, eyes taking in the floor. I could only hope that my drunken self was a better liar than my sober one.

I watch him lap up my every intonation, the way I try to pass off my joke half-heartedly. My acting is so heavy-handed it’d be a real surprise if he didn’t catch on.

“Your family live elsewhere?”

I nod. “Yeah, they’re from a fishing town a ways from here.”

“Fishing, hey? I hear that makes good coin,” He swipes his tongue along his lower lip, like he can taste it. “And you? Why’d you move?”

“Waters been getting drier and drier every year. Factory was the only choice if I wanted to keep everyone alive and well.” The words leave my mouth and the sick irony shakes me to the core. Something about having a few drinks managed to make the usual sadness bubble a little stronger. If anything, factories had done everything but keep my family alive and well. I wish my family was still alive and just a bit hungry in a tiny fishing village miles and miles from here.

“Well, here’s hoping your fishin’ folks like a factory boy, hey?” He drawls, pushing the second set of shots in my direction.

“Here hopes.”

We cheers, and take another shot.

The minute I put down my shotglass, two more land in front of us, courtesy of Mrs.S. The liquid inside of these two look similar to the shade of a putrid green rattlesnake.

“Absinthe.” He says definitively. I feel one of his hands below the table lay flat on my knee. I guess he was buying my story. Or maybe he was so drunk and horny he didn’t care.

I take a look down at the shot glass again, and feel him squeeze my knee lightly. Fuck.

I rummage my brain to think of all the ways I could possibly escape drinking this, but I realize he’s cornered me, and that maybe this had been his plan all along. If the second shot hadn’t made me feel nauseous, the thought of where this night could possibly go sure was.

I can’t get a word out, but I take the shot between my fingers and with all the liquid courage I can muster, I swallow it.

“Good girl.”


	5. Chapter 5

He shuts his door with a quiet “click”. We are alone. Just him and his squinty eyes and big smile.

The walk up the stairs to his room isn’t even a memory, it’s a dream. My feet didn’t even touch the floor. In fact, they still aren’t.

I stumble shyly around his room, trying to take in any personal details--but there are none. He has no pictures, no notebooks, no nothing. He just has a dresser, a nicely made bed (which takes up most of the room) , a window, and a door leading to a bathroom.

“You mind if I take this off?” He’s gesturing to his button-up, which is a mucky gray. Like mud on the jeep. Like factory boots.

I replace my ‘yes’ with a lazy nod.

He unbuttons his shirt and underneath is one of those white tank tops like some of the boys who worked in the furnace rooms would wear. His shoulders are painted with browned, sun-made flecks, and sculpted from hours of work outdoors. The fabric of his shirt folds and crumples in ways that can only mean he has been doing this for a long time. He is nowhere near bare, but I suddenly feel a sense of shame for staring so openly at him, like maybe I should avert my gaze.

“You’re looking at me like you’ve never seen a man before,” He chuckles, taking a seat on his bed. I stare lamely at him, still quivering near his door, my legs feeling like they’re about to snap at any moment.

“No, I just…” I splutter, and the ground seemingly tilts underneath me, “I dunno.”

He laughs, big and loud. He’s happily observing me, as I teeter around his bedroom like a toddler. I grab hold of his dresser in order to rebalance. It’s hard not to notice the deep carvings that knives have left into the top of it’s surface. I try to push the sense of imminent danger from my mind.

He pats the space beside him on the bed, and before I can even acknowledge it, I’m there, lying on my back, beside him. He’s rolled over to face me.

“Is it true?” He asks, and I feel as if I’ve already forgotten the question.

“Hmm?” I respond uneasily, gripping at the sheets in an attempt to make the bed stop rocking. Why is the bed rocking? I feel sick.

“You’ve never seen a man like this?” He says, and I have to wonder what he means. I stare unblinkingly at him, “Like...this?”, I repeat.

He gestures to himself and the bed. My eyes follow his hands, along his body to the brown of the sheets. Like this? It takes me a moment to realize what he’s suggesting, “You mean like, in a bedroom?”

He doesn’t react, waiting for me to answer the question with a ‘yes’ or ‘no’. I pick my words carefully. “Yes of course, I have!” I laugh. Well, it’s not exactly a lie. Harry and I share a bed often. I had seen him plenty of times in a lot less than what Niall was wearing, and had certainly slept close to him in that state. So yes, I had seen a man like “this”.

“That’s what I thought. You didn’t strike me as that innocent.” He says it like it’s a challenge and I suddenly get the impression that not only have I crossed a line by entering his bedroom, but I’m far too deep into the danger zone to turn back now.

I swallow thickly, it’s loud enough that he can hear it, and for the first time that evening his smile drops. Confused, I mimic him, trying to comprehend the situation. I can’t seem to keep track of his trail of thought. He suddenly doesn’t seem so drunk. Not even a little bit. But maybe it’s the alcohol making things all funny for me. 

He takes hold of my cheek, resting it in his rough hand. His hands don’t feel like anything, maybe like scratchy blanket at best, like one of the one’s from the hotels. Drawing his thumb along my lips, I try to relax into him, but my fear of what he is about to do next is too frightening for me to calm down. Faster than a bullet, he drops down, pressing his lips against mine, quick and harsh, like he`s testing me.. It’s so fast it feels like getting a mouthful of sand on a windy day.

It takes too long to settle, I’m too out of it to understand the whole reach of the situation. But he’s looking at me, waiting for me to say something, to object, maybe. But I just stare, completely dumbstruck by him. Of course this man was trying to seduce me, but the kiss felt like nothing. Was it supposed to work in a different way? I certainly felt nothing. I don’t think I could even pretend to enjoy it. Was this what seduction feels like?

He leans forward again, this time, more gently, opening my mouth by massaging it with his own chapped one. He’s sliding his tongue against my bottom lip, something I’ve never had happen to me before. All the kisses I had ever been exposed to were chaste and polite and...dry. He prods at my tongue with his own and it feels uncomfortable and I almost consider biting down on it to make this whole thing end sooner.

I close my eyes, leaving me in the darkness, nauseous, with just the feeling of his mouth and tongue against mine. The bed is still rocking. He’s just a body. I’m just a body. And we’re connected. But the longer I keep my eyes shut, the more I forget what Niall’s face looks like The longer I am away from home the more I forget what my folks used to look like. The only face I remember clearly anymore is Harry’s. I can barely recognize my own face everytime I look in a mirror lately.

He pulls back for a moment, which sends me spinning back into reality, causing me to open my eyes. He’s pulling off his shirt, exposing his sinewy chest to me. Once I pull my gaze from his abdomen, the way it’s painted with all of those little specks, I take note of the tiny hairs that collect right above where his pants start. It take me a moment, but i tear my eyes away from his crotch and back to his eyes, which for the first time that evening strike me as remarkably similar in colour to the absinthe. They’re swirling and thick with something dangerous.

Then he starts his journey, his hands are slithering up my thighs, gripping my waist like the way Harry holds a steering wheel when he’s angry. He’s dripping small pecks along my clavicles, along my neck and against the edge of my jaw. When he reaches my mouth again, I’m almost relieved, like he’s finally reached the location I’ve wanted, the one that feels the safest and most under my control.

He pulls back quickly, whispering “He ever make you do that?”

“Huh?” I choke out, it comes out hoarsely, my mouth is starting to feel swollen from the way he’s rubbed against me like sandpaper.

“Moan.”

I’m not even quite certain I had. So I just keep on looking at him, trying to figure out if he’s actually as weird looking as I think, or just not Harry.

“You know, like this…” He runs his hand between my thigh, applying pressure against--Oh. I let out a soft mewl, surprising even myself. Had that come from my mouth? I wasn’t even aware that was a noise I could m--Oh. Yes, that definitely came from my mouth.

His face splits in two, a big, self-congratulating smile dancing on his face. He keeps at it, rubbing three of his fingers against the crotch of my pants, back and forth, alternating his attention, and I’m melting. The dizziness is no longer fearful, but absolutely heavenly--a betrayal to my anxious brain.

I can’t decide whether to open or close my eyes. Instead I find myself fluttering my eyelids, occasionally staring at the fine scars that creep from his back to his shoulders, they look like lifted veins or even lightning. I hadn’t even noticed the thin grooves in his skin until I was this close to him. They only seemed noticeable from this close. The scars swirl so specifically and are so cleanly cut I wonder if they were intentional.

The extremity of the pleasure rearranges my thoughts entirely, leaving whatever was there before lost and dancing. I find my eyes rolling back.

Oh.

“That’s what I thought,” and his hands are gone. Shit. A wave of goosebumps hits me, followed by nausea. I hear myself whimper in frustration. Weeks and weeks of pent up aggression and I was so fucking close.

“I need to…” I inhale sharply, “...pee. Yes. Pee.” I roll off the bed clumsily and stumble to the bathroom, trying to tug my pants down and prevent them from riding up my crotch any further. I somehow make it to his bathroom in one piece and am greeted with impeccably clean wooden floors, a simple steel toilet, like one from a gas station. In one corner there is a matching steel sink, and the other a tub for washing. I consider for a moment just laying down inside of it until my dizziness wears off. Maybe I’ll even letting the water pour onto me--It’d been so long since I’d had a proper bath.

An almost forgotten memory pops into my spinning head: my sister and I, both no older than four, sitting in a bathtub being washed clean by our mother. The memory is so abrupt, so real, that I can practically smell the milky soap we used to use. I remember the pruning of my skin. I almost remember what her hands feel like on my scalp.

It pains me to know that I will never be there again, that my skin is no longer a blanket, but a suffocating sludge that surrounds me. Our bathtub is sitting untouched, that soap isn’t being made anymore, my mother is dead.

Maybe I’ll just hop into the tub right now and drown myself.

Harry would kill me.

I shuffle over to the sink, turning on the tap and waiting a moment for the water to cool. Even at night the Desert was so fucking hot. I splash at my face, still avoiding my own gaze in the mirror. God knows I probably look like shit. I splash and splash until my face no longer feels like it’s on fire.

A knock.

“You alright?” Comes Niall’s voice from behind the door and it shocks me, since I almost don’t recognize it. I realize it sounds malicious, like a threat, almost. Even with how drunk I feel, I couldn’t have imagined the edge of something toxic in his voice. In the state that I’m in how could I possibly defend myself? I scan the surrounding room for some sort of weapon, but the room is barren save for the bare necessities. No razors. No nothing. Was this even his room? This place looked so untouched there was no way he lived here.

Maybe I could break the mirr--”Love?”

“Hmm? Coming!” I yelp, wobbling back to the door, trying twice at the knob just to get the damn thing to open. 

“You fine there?” He asks, he looks extraordinarily worried, the kind of look a mother might send at her petulant child. He’s sitting where I left him, still shirtless, eyebrows knit. 

I take a seat back beside him on the bed, gazing around the room for any escape weapons/options: there are the ends of the bed posts, and a window too high up for me to reach.

He takes my hand in his and I unintentionally flinch, giving way to how nervous I am.

Moments like this make you animalistic, make you feel like it’s fight or flight. Like if you stay here any longer you’re going to get run over and squashed into roadkill for scavengers.

“He ever make love to you?” He whispers, and I freeze.

Even the words “make love” cause goosebumps to rise on my skin. I was never too comfortable with talking about that, even with my sister. Not that I was raised uptight or nothing, but that with everything going on I had never really had the chance to figure it out or ask my mom about it. I didn’t know much, just that it seemed like it was the kind of thing you keep private, and not tell a man you just met.

“Uh…” I begin, avoiding his eye contact, fearing that if I looked at him in the eye I’d set on fire. I could feel my face already starting to heat up again.

“It’s okay, you can be honest,” He doesn’t leave me a choice. No matter what I answer he’s going to twist it on it’s head, he’s trying to pinpoint my weaknesses and so far he’s been getting closer and closer to the target--my sexual anxiety.

I don’t want to be here anymore. I try to keep my face as still and as calm as possible. Try to avoid looking weak.

“Or…” He lifts my chin with his hand, forcing me to look at him. His big rattlesnake eyes. “He ever fuck you?”

I feel like throwing up, and all he does is laugh at whatever face I’ve made at him. He’s laughing and laughing like he’s never seen something so funny in his life. The joke was on me, something hilarious about the fact that my “fiance” hadn’t had sex with me. He’s laughing and laughing and his freckled face turns pink and I want everything to stop. I want it to stop. Stop right now. 

Stop.

And it dies out, and he’s starts getting up, his lean frame towering over me.I wonder if he’s going to leave, shame the virgin by walking out. Instead, he’s taking off his belt.

“He ever been rough with you?” He whispers lowly, after he’s taking his belt out of its loops. I swallow thickly. He knows the answer. I don’t need to say anything. He’s staring at me like I’m a hummingbird, like a diamond, like if he takes his eyes off of me I might disappear. It’s too much. This is what I meant by the feeling of being set on fire. I’m clutching his blankets so hard my knuckles are turning white.

He holds the strip of leather in both his hands before me, then folds it in half.

“I need to go,” I sputter, still sitting on his bed. 

Yes. Time to go. My body is still. Still like the way people in the diner look at me when I pull out my gun. Shit. Why hadn’t I brought my gun?

I pray silently that Harry’s plan is running smoothly, because another minute longer in here and I might leave secondhand absinthe on the floorboards. I wrestle myself into a standing position.

He reacts to my movement, taking a quick step forward, so that his breath hits my face.

“He’s never pinned you down?” I open my mouth to speak, but he’s cornering me and I can’t get my words out fast enough. “He ever use one of these before?”

“A belt?” I scoff, feigning confidence, despite the fact that I’m slowly edging backwards and practically shaking.

“Yeah. A belt,” He seethes, grin growing wide.

It’s quick, but the next thing I know my whole body aches at the speed and intensity in which I hit the ground. I land chin first and the pain wracks it’s way from my jaw through to my skull and down my spine. Through the pain I can sense that he’s standing over me, his legs on either side of me while I dry heave and groan against the wood. My body feels snapped, and half-alert. My jaw aches with such ferocity I can barely see straight. I can taste metal and I can’t make sense of anything.

Suddenly my arms are twisted behind me and my shoulders sing out in pain as he begins what I can only assume is binding me. Fuck. Fuck. Is he trying to make a tourniquet? I’m weeping and all I can smell and taste is my blood and my sweat and the stale, earthy floor. He moves me so that one side of my face is squished against the floor and I’m facing away from him, staring into corner of the bedroom.

I realize he’s tied my arms together and looped me to one of his bedpost. It’s excruciatingly uncomfortable and my vision starts to spark with blots of black. I’m seconds from throwing up, I can practically taste it in my mouth.

“Do you think you're pretty, you fat bitch?” He snarls into my ear. “Do you think you can just come into any town you like and fuck it over just like you do to all the rest?”

I can’t understand him. I can’t understand what he’s saying. How could he know who we are? The communication place-to-place was near impossible if you weren’t from somewhere rich. 

“You factory folk are sick. You make me sick. You’re as bad Town folk.”

I start to taste the salt of my tears. They’re dribbling down my face and the more I taste them the harder I cry. I can barely make a noise, can barely open my eyes so I just keep sobbing and sobbing uncontrollably, unable to take action. At least when I killed I made it quick. He presses his knee into my back and it fucking kills. It fucking hurts.

I am going to die and this was not how I planned it. It’s too soon.

“How’d you get this?” He places what I can make out to be a tiny opalescent vial into my field of vision. It’s the one I’d taken off that business shit, thinking it was his wallet. When I don’t answer he digs his knee in harder to my spine and it throbs under the pressure, “I said, how’d you GET this?”

The door creaks open, and somewhere through all the chaos I feel like I can make sense of it. I could recognize his step anywhere. I could recognize his voice underwater. Knowing him, he probably was waiting outside the whole time, thinking about when would be best to come in, making sure I value his presence more than ever.

Instead of his voice, the strangest buzz comes to my attention, like the sound of one of those old factory machines we used to use, stirring back to life.

“Looks like you two are having a lovely evening,” I can see his mucked up suede boots in the corner of my vision. “But it’s late now, time for Diana to go to bed.”


	6. Chapter 6

“That ain’t yours,” Niall’s voice cracks, “you have no idea how to use that thing.” He sounds afraid--terrified. The pressure on my back lifts and I am able to finally maneuver myself to take a look up at Harry. He doesn’t acknowledge me. 

“You could set this place on fire!”

“Is that a request?” In Harry’s hand sits something I have never seen before in my life, and yet, I know exactly what it is: a laser gun. Just the sound it makes when it’s alive, that hum, it makes my blood run cold. The noise immediately reminds you of the sound of Pigs--they were the only one’s who carried those things. 

I can't help but be surprised when I catch sight of his face; I’ve never seen Harry look so calm. Maybe his face always looks like this underneath his mask when we’re shooting up places.

“You wanna burn this place to the ground? Fine, have it your way,” Niall starts making his way towards Harry. “But it’s been ashes for years. None of this is how it was. You fuckers ruined it all.”

“Not interested in your sob story,” Harry says evenly, still holding out the buzzing laser gun.

“Let me guess, cus you got your own?” 

Harry’s face twitches slightly, I can tell, just by that tiny response that he’s fuming. Niall catches sight of this, picks up on that subtle movement, and starts to poke at the cracks, “You know, she says you’ve never made her moan. Took me a seconds and I barely touched her,” 

Harry blinks, letting Niall’s words wash over him, before letting out a booming laugh, “You’re a stupid, stupid fuck.” He takes aim at the farthest wall from us. There’s a fast flash and from what I can make out from the corner of my eye the wall has a clean cut hole in it, and it shimmers and flickers with the beginnings of a fire. “Thanks for the hospitality.”

Niall dives at him, but Harry is too quick. He kicks him back, and Niall’s head collides with one of the bedposts that I’m not bound to. With a sickening crack, he crumples to the ground, and a trickle of blood starts to slither across the floorboards, into the grooves of the wood. I can see him still breathing, affirming that he is unconscious, and not dead--for now.

“You want me to kill him, Di?” Harry asks, laser gun pointed towards the unconscious figure. But his eyes are on me.

“I want to be able to feel my fingers…” I choke out.

In a flash he’s pulling me up and untying my burning wrists. I collapse into him, rubbing my wet, bloodied face against his neck. My cheeks feel sore and swollen, but I can't bring myself to move from him. He envelops me in his arms, and he smells like his sweat and he smells like Harry should smell. He’s warm and concrete and safe, and I can feel goosebumps rising on his skin. I know he’s surprised, just by the way he’s awkwardly holding me, but he doesn’t let go, and that’s enough. That is enough to keep me tethered to the the ground and not float away.

We finally separate when the smell of burning in the room becomes too apparent to ignore, and just like he always does when I get shook up, he grabs my hand and starts leading me down the stairs. He’s not too tough and not too easy, he forces my wobbly legs to take the steps as quick as I can. He’s practically dragging me along the rickety floorboards, one of his rough hands laced with mine, the other holding the whirring electronic revolver. Every tug on my hand sends jolts of pain up my arm.

The building is dead quiet, save for the sound of our feet hitting wood. I see now that it’s nearly nighttime outside. Our “afternoon” of rest has been everything but. 

“I packed our stuff, go get in the car,” He releases my hand and roughly pushes open the door, gesturing quickly to our jeep parked out front. Along the side reads the words “DIE FACTORY SCUM” scraped into it. Wonderful.

He passes me the keys, which I can barely hold in my hands. I’m trembling.

“Come on, get in, I’ll meet you in a second,” He turns back towards the inn.

“Wait! Harry!” I yelp, my frazzled brain grabbing wildly at concepts. I nearly reach for his hand, desperate to not lose sight of him. He looks back at me, expectantly. A million words bubble up: ‘please don’t leave me’, ‘please hold me’, ‘can we stop this madness’ ‘i love you’. But all that comes out is: “Don’t forget to grab the vial! Niall has it!”

He makes eye contact with me and gives me an assuring nod before darting back indoors. My eyes travel upwards to take sight of the smoke that is now snaking out of the roof and into the night sky. I allow myself to take it in for a moment, allow myself to watch the serpent rise before settling myself into the car.

When Harry returns he has his gym bag strapped around his body, the laser gun in one hand and a large bottle of clear liquid in the other. He dumps the sack into the backseat, which clinks all too noisily with the sound of more liquor bottles. With the remaining one in his hand, he pops it open.

He takes a long, desperate sip, followed by a loud swallow. His face crumpled in disgust, he begins to pour the remaining amount of liquid onto the front porch of the wooden estate.

Watching him curiously, he silently swings the bottle around, spraying lashes of hooch at the front walls and door. Then, when the liquid is gone, he swings the glass against one of the walls, smashing it into dozens of threatening pieces.

Then, once more, the sound of the laser gun whirring to life meets my ears, and the front of the building is suddenly alight. Before I am even able to comprehend the situation, Harry has somehow managed to circle the car and get into the driver’s seat.

“Did you kill all of them?” I ask breathlessly, not tearing my eyes from his masterpiece. I watch quietly as the flames envelop the inn, crushing the walls in it’s fiery embrace. The surrounding buildings, also made of wood, start to catch flame themselves.

“Nah. Just a few.”

Before turning on the engine, he digs his hand into his duffle, removing this evening's most featured and deadly drink: absinthe. He takes a hefty swig, before passing it to me and launching the car into movement.

“Your face looks like shit,” He states offhandedly, “ It’s gonna hurt tomorrow, you should have some.”

No one even comes out to fight us. Maybe they're all just staying inside, hiding.

Maybe they’ve accepted their deaths long before we even got here.  
\---

It’s night, or maybe morning, and it’s humid, and the earth isn’t much worse to sleep on than our beat up old thing.

The two of us are leaning against one of the back tires of the jeep, trading swigs back and forth. We’ve pulled ourselves off the road and splayed out some blankets on a barren side spot. 

I’ve smoked most of my pack and I’ve only had it for a few hours, but every cigarette doesn’t seem to be enough to ease the pain of tonight. My body aches and my chin is beginning to hit the early stages of swelling and bruising, so I just keep on drinking. I had caught sight of myself in the rear window, and my face is all swollen and blood splattered and bruised.

Harry uses one of our water bottles from earlier to help clean my face. He keeps dabbing an old sock into it, and wiping gently over my jaw and lips. He’s trying to make it as painless as possible, but even with all the booze it still hurts. 

I use what’s left of the water bottle to rinse off the blood I had wiped onto his neck from when we had hugged earlier. He smells like absinthe and fire, and not as much like himself as he usually does. A night’s rest outside will air him out.

When he’s done I strip off my bloodied shirt and take one of Harry’s old button ups from the trunk. Last time I tried it on it had been too small, and although it wa still ill fitting, I could get most of the buttons up, but the straining of the buttons around my boobs was evident. When I’m dressed again, which takes a while since buttoning shirts is hard when you’re drunk, I stumble my way back down beside him. His boots are off, his eyes are closed, and he’s humming.

When I sit beside him, he opens an eye to take a peek at me. I can tell he’s having a hard time focusing on me just by the way his body keeps swaying.

"A real life laser gun, huh?" I giggle, running my fingers in indelicate patterns along the dirt. The grains get caught under my nails, but I don’t care. 

“You’ll never guess where I found it,” His face is so close to mine. The hot air of his breath tickles my face, flooding my senses with the smell of liquor. I can see where the the hairs on his upper lip are starting to grow in. I can see the little red veins in his eyes, I can see the pores on his nose. We spend every day together, but how often do I really, truly, look at him. 

I inhale sharply, not breaking hazy eye contact with him. His eyes are better than absinthe, they're green like the sporadic patches of grass that sprout on the desert roadside-- a reminder that there’s still something alive and growing out here. My own metaphor causes my eyes to water, and a lump to appear in my throat. I pluck my notebook and pencil up from beside me, and sloppily scribbling down my thoughts.

‘Eyes like grass in the desert’ is all I manage to get out. That’ll do. Too difficult to write right now.

The quiet croaks and hums of the desert fill our silence. It feels like him and I are the centre of the world.

“Where?” I ask, after settling my notebook down. He’s smiling at me.

He pulls a finger to his lips as a sign of secrecy, and I’m forced to paw weakly at his shoulder. After a moment of that, I take to tugging at the material of his button-up.”Harry, please!” I pull at it enough so that it reveals one of the sparrows on his chest. It flutters it’s wings at me and I know I’ve drank too much. After I tug at his shirt enough times, he finally gives in.

“Okay, okay!” His smile grows so big, big enough so that his little dimples are carved into the pink hue of his cheeks like little dents on the hood of a car. When he smiles I feel like a house on fire. He’s a real life laser beam.

I raise my hand from his shoulder to his face, trailing my fingers along his skin the entire time, desperate to touch his perfection. Digging my pointer finger into the little fold beside his smile, I can’t help but smile too. He doesn’t stop grinning and I can feel my chest swell with something between nausea, fear, and adoration. He is looking at me, half-lidded and red in the face. He always says that “we’re too good looking kids on the run, and it’s a blessing”, but to me I think it’s just him, and I cower in his shadow; waitresses would rather sleep with him, while desert boys try to murder me and call me a “fat bitch” after tying me to their bedposts.

“Tell me,” I insist, changing my hand motion now to something like a light stroke, fingers catching the texture of his skin, tickled by the little baby hairs that cover his cheek.

“That old lady--She grabbed it from under her skirt,” he whispers, only to me. Just me.

I grow still, removing my hand from his face. We hold a moment of silence, making eyes at one another, each of us bubbling with something wonderful. In moments like these it pains me to not know what he is thinking.

Then, I laugh so hard it hurts, and he laughs with me. I reach for his hand, I had been craving it’s touch since it was removed from me. I squeeze it, and bubble with more and more laughter, letting out a sound I had long forgotten I could make. The air is warm but his hand is scorching and I feel like, maybe, just for a second, if I closed my eyes, I would be home.

\---

The next morning I wake up sitting upwards, my drool pouring onto Harry’s shoulder, his hand still entwined with mine. Nauseated, in pain, and overheated, I slowly lift my head, which currently feels like a box filled with nuts and bolts. If anything, my face feels more sore and even heavier than the night before. Then again, I had been drunk the entirety of last night.

I take a look downwards towards our still laced together hands--hot and clammy from the sun. My eyes slowly drift towards his other hand, which is carefully perching onto my notebook.

“Hey!” I swat the pad out of his hand, clearly scaring the shit out of him. He pulls himself away from my weight, drawing his hand away from mine. My voice is croaky and uneven and I have to clear my throat several times to try to get the next sentence out.

“What!? I thought it was a sketch pad! I didn’t know!!” He says defensively, picking it up off the desert floor, and sweeping off the collected dirt and sand.

“And you kept going!?” I snatch it from his hands, drawing it to my chest. That small action causes my wrists to burn.

“I saw my name!” He says, as if that were some kind of valid excuse. My face grows hot in embarrassment. My pulse feels so powerful and my hands feels so useless I think I might just drop the damn book.

I try to pick myself off of the ground, but my body aches and cracks in the process, and the portion of my face that was smashed against the floor yesterday feels like it’s tipping me over. He calls out my name a few times, but I ignore him and take a glance at my own reflection in the side view mirror--despite the throbbing pain, the only sign of damage was a split lip, and a slightly purpled jaw. I open my mouth to look at my teeth and gums, which despite feeling like they had been smashed to bits, seemed fine, and untouched. 

As I lightly massage my jaw, checking for anything abnormal, Harry pops up behind me, his face coming into the reflection of the fender mirror.

“Let’s go. We need to get somewhere safe before nightfall if we’re going to keep driving this way,” He says, face frantic and concerned. I ignore him. He keeps staring at me in the reflection like the nuisance that he is. Finally, after a minute of me not answering, he slams his hand in front of the mirror, “Come on, Di.” 

“Fine,” I sigh. Despite my lazy protests he helps settle me into the jeep. My limbs feel so fragile he even takes the time to buckle me into the car.

“Don’t get so worked up. We’re gonna be dead next thing you know,” He mutters, just before circling back around to the driver’s seat. Hypocrite. I’m not sure what that’s supposed to mean, or if that means he read something he shouldn’t have, but a deep seated anger grows in the pit of my stomach. How stupid was I to think I could keep anything from someone who spends every waking moment beside me? How stupid was I to think I could have a space of my own? A sense of privacy?

I spend the ride, reading my own writing, guessing what embarrassing diatribe he may have seen. Was it the sweeping monologues about the way he slept or the way I missed shaving the hairs of my legs? I wonder if he pities me, thinks my ideas are trivial. Either way, the sense of being invaded would not simmer down, even after nearly an hour and a half in bumpy silence. My cheeks seared endlessly. Maybe I’ll just chuck the stupid thing out the window.

Maybe I’ll just chuck myself out the window and dry out on the desert floor--let the vultures pick at me, let the Pigs eat my body. After all, a “fat bitch” like myself could probably feed them for days.

\--

There isn’t really a “when we first met” story, it’s sort of a muddled origin tale if anything. We’d known each other our whole lives, technically. When I was in school we had done group projects together, had watched each other grow through our awkward stages, had gone through the motions with each other for years. It’s not as if we were ever unfriendly, but my sister was on better terms with him than I was, so he’d still pop by for dinners sometime.

I don’t share too many memories of us together before the Town swept us up. Harry seems to recall doing some sort of plant project together when we were much younger, but I’m pretty sure he’s mistaking me for someone else. 

It feels like a bad dream, the way our village seemed to shrink over night. When the Town showed up, they promised us more food, more water, more shelter, and while the promise of this seemed enticing, the process certainly wasn’t. I guess something about our land just made the whole thing suffer. They built factories, and jobs for us that we’d never even heard of before. We were making money. It started off exhilarating, the sounds of the machines whirring at night, the days of standing on your feet to do some monotonous task to make a piece of a piece of a piece of godknowswhat. Our village felt connected to something bigger than itself for once. 

The only thing they hadn’t told us was that not every village flourishes--some suffer. Must have been something in the water, because while our town grew richer, it also grew smaller--freak accidents, factory fires, disease, infection--it happened all at once. Everyone dropped like flies, and the crops that had once been the attractive element of our village, had wilted. Death used to feel scary, something you would knock on wood about, praying it never would happen to your family. In that same knock your family would be gone. My grandparents, then my sister, my father, and my mother was last to go. It never got easier, it just became expected.

There was a point when the chatter in the factories died out, where you could look up to see at least ten people from the week before gone. I used to stare out at my coworkers, in the zen of nothingness--ridding my brain of anything and everything: pain was too unbearable and happiness was too fantastical. 

I used to make eyes with Harry across the room. We’d never smile, or say anything, I doubt he thought much of it. In a way, just looking at each other in those moments was our way of keeping track as to who was still alive.


	7. Chapter 7

It begins like a strange flutter, like a bag wavering in the wind. We’ve been driving off and on for four days, living on nothing but granola bars, dried fruit, and alcohol, since we’ve run out of water. At first, it’s so subtle we barely notice it, but as we drive deeper into the mouth of the desert, I realize this is a miracle. For the first time in nearly four months, DJ Death Defy’s voice is crystal clear, he no longer sounds like a masked vigilante, but a neighbour or a friend.

Neither of us say anything, but the excitement is palpable, we know what this means: we’re close.

After nearly half an hour of pure, quality signal, the two of us go a bit stir crazy, our eyes sweeping across the desert floor for signs of life. We’re barely even taking in what DJ Death is saying, we just want to find him. After all, once you hit the Dead Zone, it can only mean two things: the station is close, and not-so-far away is The Town.

Only problem is, one was a lot bigger and easier to find than the other; The station’s appearance is just rumors and hearsay. 

It’s only when the feeling of dread and anxiety is so overbearing, and our bodies begin to change from overheated to lightheadedness, that we spot it. At least, we think it’s it. Like finding a needle in a haystack, Harry’s mind, which is seemingly more level than mine at this point, grabs ahold of it, and drives towards it. As we get closer, it grows from needle, to marble, to a visible, make-shift satellite dish.

This was the radio station. This was where rebels went when there was nothing left for them, or when they made revolutionary plans, where they had sanctuary. This was a place even Pigs avoided. Only the best of the best spent time here.

What was initially excitement turns into a sense of impending doom. For several yards a cyclone of barbed wires and weapons wrap around what could only be the radio station within. No sign of an entrance. We even spend a few minutes circling the damn thing. Harry stops the engine, and it wheezes to a halt. The two of us make our way out onto the desert floor to get a better look at this thing. 

Harry swallows so loud I can hear it over the wind. The layers of barbed wire reach nearly twice his height.

It’s hard to knock on someone’s front door if you may not have any hands left by the time you reach it.

“Fuck,” We both grunt simultaneously.

“There’s gotta be another way around, I mean, there's no way these guys get ripped to shreds every time they wanna leave the station,” He grumbles, eyes darting across the ground, looking for something.

“Maybe they don’t ever leave the station?” I suggest, brain woozy and stomach queasy from standing after sitting for so long.

“What? And they just eat each other? Don’t be a fucking idiot.”

The shame sets in immediately, and I shut my mouth, holding in frustrated, exhausted tears. I might even be too dehydrated to cry. 

Harry gazes back at our predicament, face unreadable. Lips pulled tight. I can tell he has no intention to apologize for calling me a “fucking idiot” anytime soon. This was the same Harry that turned to me so long ago and told me to runaway with him--the one that is all business and no fun. This Harry was the one that shoots people, sets buildings on fire, and fucks waitresses for food. This was the one that didn’t care for me, I’m just another body.

“Should we just...go?” I mutter quietly, preparing for him to snap at me once more.

I can see him trying not to sigh in defeat. I knew that one of the few things he’d wanted before he was “gone” was to meet DJ Death Defy. The fact that we had even found the station was something special, meeting him would just be the cherry on top.

As we start to walk our way back to the jeep, a small explosion of sand erupts from the right of us, sheets of dust flying everywhere. The two of us yelp in surprise, as a small trap door slides open. From underneath the ground pops out a head with some kind of gas mask placed over it. No distinguishable features save for the gray head piece.

“Listen, we’re not accepting anym--” It’s a man’s voice, but it cuts shorts suddenly, “--Nevermind. Come this way.”

The man in the gasmask pops back into the ground, leaving nothing but a small square hole with no obvious end to it.

I make eyes with Harry, who is seemingly just as confused as I am. I see his fingers tremble lightly over where his laser gun is tucked into his jeans. He looks back at the trap door once more before he steps forward and follows suit. I watch him eye the hole warily, and then, after a moment's thought, leap into it.

For a second the desert is so silent, it scares me. I feel like that tiny flea again.

Harry’s head appears from the earth, “Come on, Di!” He hisses with some newfound excitement in his voice. 

I follow suit, first sliding onto my butt, dangling my legs down the hole, and pushing off to land in the darkness below.

I land a lot earlier than expected, which causes me to stumble into Harry’s back. He ignores me, too busy eyeing the location and trying to seem cool.

It’s a small, dark tunnel made of some kind of pavement. The insides are covered in sand and the place smells like stale, dead air. So far, the radio station was nothing but dangerous and uncleanly. 

The trapdoor slams behind me, and I whip around in fright. The man with the gas mask stands behind me, presumably eyeing me for a moment, before cutting in front of both of us and beginning to lead the way down the tunnel.

I’ve never been afraid of the dark, but walking in silence down a long, pitch black tunnel with a total stranger will certainly strike fear in you.

It’s been minutes, and each step feels more difficult than the last. The earth is uneven, and my chest feels heavy due to the lack of fresh airflow. I try to focus on keeping my breathing even and Harry’s footsteps, but it’s so difficult to hear over the scuffing of the gasmask man’s boots. Where are we going?

Then, as if some higher being had heard me, a loud ‘clunk’ and ‘click’ echo through the passage, and light swims in.

With the light comes someone’s hand reaching in, and the sounds of faint music and voices. My heart stutters with anxiety, and every part of me wishes it were just Harry and I in a car alone. Every part of me wishes I was home. Or dead. 

“What’d they want?” Comes a detached, muffled voice. The man in the gasmask doesn’t respond, he just takes the other man’s hand and hoists himself up onto the floor above. Then, the masked man extends his hand and begins to help Harry up, who doesn’t even need his help in the first place. He just grips onto the entrance and seemingly throws his body weight and long legs in such a way that he can get himself out. 

“What’d I say? What’d I fucking say? We don’t have room for more people!” The voice from above grows more and more angry by the second. Harry reaches down for me, and I grab hold of it immediately. If only he knew the comfort his hands brought me. It took several attempts for me to get onto the second floor, due to my lack of coordination and body strength, but when I do the room seemingly falls silent.

“Did you bring both of them? Are you fucking kid…” I look up to see three unfamiliar men staring down at me. The man who was previously fuming, is now openly ogling me, jaw slightly lopsided, a cigarette placed loosely between his lips. In a matter of seconds, he’s helping me off the floor and bringing me face to face with him. 

He’s roughly my height, but certainly a lot skinnier. His hair is mussed around in that disheveled likeability that Harry somehow obtained. He’s taking in my still bruised jaw, then quickly sweeps his eyes around the cleavage area of my shirt. His features are sharp, cheekbones prominent due to months of malnourishment. He scratches at his facial hair, as if he were considering what to do with the two of us, maybe thinking ‘is it too late to kick them out?’.

Despite his unkempt appearance, it’s obvious that he’s physically attractive, especially with his eyes, that are an extraordinary mix of blue and green--eyes that could put Harry’s to shame. He pulls the cigarette from his mouth, “You want this? You’re eyeing it.”

I look back at Harry for approval, he’s ignoring me, intentionally, and pretending to look at the decorations on the walls of this place. My stomach twists with shame again, it’s as if I was humiliating him just by breathing.

“Yeah,” I mumble, “I’d love one. Thank you,” As the man draws another cigarette from his pocket, the guy beside him, the one who was wearing the gas mask as of minutes ago, hands me one. Really I’d rather have a glass of water and food, but when he hands me the cigarette, filter first, as if I could just wrap my lips around it. I can’t say no.

I notice the other man, the one who lit my cigarette, is also quite malnourished looking, deep set dark eyes with taupe brown skin, like the colour of driftwood. He’s one of the few people I’d seen in awhile who was coloured similarly to myself. I make eyes with him and he lifts his eyebrows in acknowledgement, as if to say ‘you’re welcome’.

The first guy, the one with the beautiful eyes, is quick to lift his lighter and take care of the next issue at hand. Is this a competition? “So, what brings you both here? You siblings?”

Harry pulls his gaze from a selection of dusty records. Whether he’s aware of it or not, his eyebrows are knit together, giving the impression that he is very unhappy to be here. Wasn’t this what he wanted? Wasn’t this on his bucket list? 

“No. We’re not w--” I begin. 

“--Might as well be.” He shrugs, dropping himself onto the well-worn leather looking couch that sits against the wall of the shack. Above the couch, hanging from the wall is what looks like an ancient lazer gun, and a motorcycle helmet that’s been spray painted so much that the original colour is unrecognizable.

“I mean…” I flush with embarrassment, unable to finish my thought. But the trio of men in the room don’t react, they just seemingly make eyes at one another. “Sure?”

Something inside of me shatters. Up until this point I hadn’t even realized it was there--like stepping on a pair of glasses you didn’t see on the floor. Like whatever was left keeping me standing after the loss of my family, friends and home, had just given in.

I take a long drag from my smoke.

“We’ve been trying to get here for a month or two now. S’all we have left.” Harry states curtly to the man at the farthest end of the room. He says it like it’s easy, and I can barely make a noise. I’m trying to wrap my head around it--did he think of me like a sister?

“To come here?” Says the other man. He appears to be the oldest, at least judging by his physicality and face. He’s sporting something close to a beard, and he’s dressed in a simple black shirt and jeans. Despite the beard, he’s the most well groomed out of all three. He notices me staring at him and gives me a small smile, one that crinkles his eyes and softens the blow of Harry’s words from moments ago.

“Yeah, we we’re thinking bef--” “--We’re heading to the Town but wanted to meet DJ before doing it,” Harry interrupts again.

The blue eyed one locks eyes with me, and even though he’s looking right at me I feel like I’m looking right through him, still trying to piece together something. “You came here to die?” He nearly whispers.

I drop my gaze to the floor, exhaling a stream of smoke.

“We did,” Harry admits, “But we’ve got a special kind of plan.”

“Listen, kid,” He sighs, “It was nice to meet you, but we’re going to have to cut this visit short, we don’t have the food or the beds to host you guys.”

I look over at Harry, who is frowning and staring intently at the three of them. He’s angry, but not quite defeated. I know what he looks like when he’s defeated. He digs his hand into his breast pocket, and drops something onto the coffee table in front of him.

The air grows thicker, and the darker skinned man treads his way across the room to look at what is on the table, “How’d you get this?” He breathes. 

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Yes it does.” Cuts in the one with the beard, his voice is intimidatingly direct. He goes to to pick it up, but Harry has already snatched it and is holding onto it for dear life. “We don’t have the manpower to fight off whoever might want that back.”

“They’re dead.” I interject, he turns to me, slightly stunned by my change in tone. “I killed them. We’re fine.”

The one with the eyes takes a long sigh, then in a single sentence rips Harry a new one: “Do you even know what that is, kid?”

Harry’s face twitches, clearly not affectionate towards his new nickname. But his lack of response to the question makes me quickly realize he doesn’t. Although, I have to applaud him for being so quick. Obviously he had known it was something important.

“That,” He plucks it from Harry’s hand, and raises the tiny vial so that it shimmers under the light, “could power our station for five years. Minimum.”

I look over at the two other men in the room, and can tell that this is no joking matter. The look in their eyes is the same as the one that Harry and I’s village possesed when they offered us factories--pure potential, endless possibility. 

Then, the room is deadly silent, and I’m unsure what’s supposed to come next. After a moment, the blue eyed boy turns to me, plucking the dabbed out end of my cigarette and tossing it into a neighbouring ashtray for me. “I’m Louis.”


	8. Chapter 8

The five of us sit quietly, the afterglow of Harry’s offer sinking in, chewing away at the mystery meat before us. I’m far too hungry to question anything, all I can think about is the savage throbbing in my stomach. Funny how you never realize how hungry you are until you actually try to put food in your mouth.

The blue eyed boy is Louis, he’s the actual voice of DJ Death Defy--although hearing him in person, you have to really listen to hear it. I guess the airwaves muddle with the sound of his voice quite a bit. The darker skinned man is named Zayn, who after introducing himself, has become eerily silent once more. The man with the beard is Liam, and the best adjective I can describe him with is “intense”.

Even as Liam cooked up the meat, the room had been painfully undisturbed. Zayn took to the corner, examining the vial and scribbling (or doodling maybe?) away in a notebook. Louis, on the other hand, sat quietly on the arm of the couch, smoking, occasionally letting his eyes wander over to me, and occasionally letting his eye drop into a wink.

When we’ve all finished with our plates Liam comes around and collects them. I thank him quietly, hopeful words were enough to express my gratitude. I couldn’t remember the last time i had actually eaten. 

A pang of sadness strikes me in my chest--realizing this was what we had been dreaming of. This was the station--DJ Death Defy wasn’t some superhuman, some guardian angel, he was just some...kid? Like us. I guess instead of getting up and driving, he just built a station around his pain, and projected it to the desert. He’s just like us. Just as lost. He seemed to have no better idea of what to do in this world than we did. If anything, he just knew how to survive longer.

“What do you guys do all day?” I peep up, trying to initiate something close to a conversation. “Like when you’re not ‘on air’?”

Zayn clears his throat before answering, “We usually, uh, do trades with other types, and take in any wounded, you know, if we can.”

“It hasn’t really been a thing for awhile. We’ve been running low on supplies, and numbers of rebels have been low, while numbers in Pigs get higher.”

Louis mumbles something about ‘fucking filthy cannibals’ under his breath as he lights up another cigarette. 

“Oy.” Zayn snaps, drawing everyone’s attention to his corner of the room. He’s pointing at Louis’s smoke, “Try to ration them at least.”

“You’re kidding, right? These two are offering straight energy for nearly five years. We’re going to be hitting new towns with this kind of power. We’re going to get even further reach with our radi--”

“--Which also means more Pigs will hear us, and more of them will come f--”

“--Oh, I’m sorry, did I mention with more radio signal we can also improve rations and start up those security guns agai--”

“--Except you can’t be certain of that now, can y--”

“--ENOUGH.” The sound of a plate smashing into thousands of pieces echoes from the kitchen to the main room. I nearly fly out of my seat in shock, gripping onto Harry’s thigh subconsciously. He quickly places his hand on top of mine, and for the first time in a few days that sense of relief washes over me again. But just as fast as he’s there, he’s gone and he’s removed it. “You two. Shut up. Let’s enjoy the company and think on it, alright?”

Louis lets out an expertly dramatic sigh, and a wave of smoke spreads across the room like a tablecloth. My eyes water. There’s practically no air flow in here. “So,” He starts, and I get the sense he hasn’t even thought of the second half of his sentence yet, he’s just preparing a topic change. “What are your plans for after this?”

I inhale sharply, instinctively turning to Harry, who is seemingly studying the wooden table we’re eating at.

“To put it lightly, we’re killing ourselves.”

The sound of clinking and clanging in the kitchen immediately mutes, and I can only assume Liam is listening atttentively.

“Hmm, okay,” Louis chuckles, “...Why?”

“Because we have something to say.” Suddenly I realize how childish he sounds, and a creeping sense of embarassment itches at my face. It sounded so stupid suddenly.

“And that is?”

I watch Harry’s jaw tense ever so slightly, “We’re sick of this bullshit. You can’t just destroy every village you feel like for your own benefit. You can’t force labour on people. You c--”

“--How exactly do you plan on doing this…?” Liam says from the doorway, folding his arms in disdain. I notice his right hand is bleeding quite heavily and is wrapped in a towel, but he seems unworried, as if it were a papercut.

“We…” Harry fumbles over his words, a rare instance for him. He looks so small, like a child scolded by his parents. “We have a head in our trunk.”

Our timebomb.

Two good looking kids on the run, a time bomb in our trunk.

“A...head…?” Zayn repeats, holding back a condescending smirk. “Who’s?”

“A higher up from the Town, came to our factory for a visit...:” Harry trails off, checking my expression from the corner of his eye, as if he were expecting me to speak. All I can do is gape like a fish.

“You think they care about some factory runner?” Louis snaps, “You’re a fucking idiot. You killed a man and now you have his rotting head in your trunk.”

“It’s in an airtight Town bag. It looks like the day we found it.” He argues, face increasingly growing redder, eyes darting furiously between each person in the room, excluding myself.

“You found his head?” Zayn raises his eyebrow in confusion. 

“No,” I practically whisper. They all turn to me, Harry included, who looks at me for the first time in hours. “It was an accident.”

I look at Harry, who is back to avoiding my eyes. I swallow.

“He was trying to rape me, Harry took a wrench and…” I had imagined this moment so many times over and over again in my head, and yet hadn’t spoken about it. My heart seemed to double in speed. I remembered the man’s breath on my face.

Liam shakes his head dissaprovingly, “That’s horrible. Honestly.” He leans against the doorframe, thinking momentarily. “Frankly, not to be...insensitive,” he gestures to me, “but I don’t think this is a smart course of action.”

I nod, unsure how to register this statement.

“I mean, to be...er…” He looks over at Louis and Zayn, in hopes they will be the bearer of bad news.

“He’s saying that they won’t give a fuck. You’ll get shot the minute you try to cross the gates with a head in your hands and you’re a fucking idiot for even trying.”

Harry pushes his seat out with a loud screech and walks off to another part of the station, practically stomping.

I catch eyes with Louis, who sends me a sad sort of smile, followed by a small eyebrow wiggle. Unsure of myself, I give him a tiny smile back. 

And suddenly the looming feeling of my own death lifts ever so slightly.


End file.
